Internet Archive Finally Sued; Plenty Of Questions Raised

from the been-waiting-for-that-one... dept

Exactly one year ago, today, we wrote about a lawsuit where the lawyers on one side used the Internet Archive to find certain web pages that could be seen as incriminating evidence in the case. The lawyers on the other side were none too pleased, obviously, and accused the other lawyers of "hacking" into the Internet Archive. The company is now suing the Internet Archive and the lawyers, saying they had a robots.txt file blocking those pages, and the Archive ignored it. There are a ton of interesting legal questions raised by this lawsuit -- covering the DMCA, the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act, and plenty of other questions concerning property and copyright. Looking at the specific claims in the case, it looks like the case is unlikely to go very far. However, these questions are unlikely to go away, so this case is definitely going to be one to watch as a precursor to others that are likely to follow.